Cycles

I'm not entirely certain why or how I ended up there, but I found myself sitting in front of one of my favorite databases half an hour ago, looking up the correlation between relationships and sleep.  As it stands, finding the keywords for such a search is less than simple, and many of the papers that appeared were far from what I sought.  I did, however, run across some interesting things along the way.

One of the studies I found noted a relationship between insomnia and other conditions including anxiety and depression.  Another one observed the pattern between disputes among couples and how well each partner slept.  Not surprisingly, increased disputes led to worse sleep led to increased disputes.  And it's the same thing with anxiety or depression...being upset leads to sleeping poorly leads to feeling more upset.

So once again, there are two more examples of vicious cycles--situations in which everything deteriorates, conditions which are hard to break, and a confining spiral of doom (melodramatic though that may sound).  That made me wonder...are there even any cycles that aren't vicious?  I mean, beyond the water cycle and all of those that are drilled into everyone's head since middle school.

It seems as though everything points out how the world is going to bits, how life is crashing down around us and we're trapped in this cycle, unable to change anything.  There has to be some antithesis to this, though.  Everything can't perpetually be going downhill.  Yes, I know, entropy.  I've studied it enough.  But still, entropy doesn't seem to be the most reasonable policy when dealing with human emotions and thoughts, it would seem to lead to far more suicides than it actually does (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

So what's the counterweight?  Something balances all of it out.  Something keeps it all from falling apart and really spiraling down.  Is it a series of cycles that isn't vicious and leads to well-being (philanthropy comes to mind, but I don't know that its magnitude can equal that of depression or even come close)?  Or is there at least some linear force?  There appears to be, certainly.  But now I want to know, what is it?